Section/Ruku 19
[Verses 181 to 189]: Carpings of People of the
Book:Chapter
3: (Al-Imran: The Family of
Amran)(Revealed at Madinah:
20 sections; 200 verses)

1. Translation:181 Allah has certainly heard the
saying of those who said: Allah is poor and we are rich. We
shall record what they say, and their killing the prophets
unjustly, and We shall say: Taste the chastisement of
burning.a

182 This is for
that which your own hands have sent before, and because
Allah is not in the least unjust to the servants.

183 Those who
say: Allah has enjoined us that we should not believe in any
messenger until he brings us an offering which is consumed
by the fire.a
Say: Indeed there came to you messengers before me with
clear arguments and with that which you demand. Why then did
you try to kill them, if you are truthful?b

184 But if they
reject thee, so indeed were rejected before thee messengers
who came with clear arguments and scriptures and the
illuminating Book.a

185 Every soul
will taste of death. And you will be paid your reward fully
only on the Resurrection day. Then whoever is removed far
from the Fire and is made to enter the Garden, he indeed
attains the object. And the life of this world is nothing
but a provision of vanities.

186 You will
certainly be tried in your property and your persons. And
you will certainly hear from those who have been given the
Book before you and from the idolaters much
abuse.a
And if you are patient and keep your duty, surely this is an
affair of great resolution.

187 And when
Allah took a covenant from those who were given the Book:
You shall explain it to men and shall not hide it. But they
cast it behind their backs and took a small price for it. So
evil is that which they buy.

188 Think not
that those who exult in what they have done, and love to be
praised for what they have not done  think not them to
be safe from the chastisement; and for them is a painful
chastisement.

189 And
Allahs is the kingdom of the heavens and the earth.
And Allah is Possessor of power over all things.

2. Commentary:181a.TThe Jews ridiculed the poverty of
the Muslims and their borrowings from the Jewish
money-lenders. They also ridiculed the raising of funds for
the defence of the faith by subscriptions. See 5:64, 64a.
[Back
to verse 181]

183a.
The reference is to the burnt offerings of the Mosaic law,
for which see Lev.1:9: And the priest shall burn all
on the altar, to be a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by
fire. And Deut. 33:10 where, blessing Israel, Moses
says: They shall put incense before thee, and whole
burnt sacrifice upon thine altar. Compare also Lev.
8:18. The demand of the Jews that the Prophet should bring
to them an offering which the .re should consume is only a
demand for the burnt-offering of the Israelite law, so that
what they persisted in was that the promised prophet should
be an Israelite and should revive the Israelite law.
[Back
to verse 183]

183b.
The carpers are here told that they even sought to kill
those prophets who followed the Mosaic Law, who came,
with that which you demand. Hence their
rejection was due to the stubbornness of their hearts.
[Back
to verse 183]

184a.
The prophets are said to have come with three things 
with arguments and with the zubur and the illuminating Book.
Zubur is the plural of zubrah, which means
a big piece of iron, and of zabur, which
signifies a written thing. According to R, every
book which is hard in writing is called a zabur.
According to LL, zabur signifies a Divine book
which it is difficult to become acquainted with. Zj
says, every book full of wisdom is a zabur (Rz). The
commentators generally understand by the zubur the sacred
scriptures of the prophets and by the illuminating
Book the book containing the guidance which every
prophet brought to his people, so that they should follow
those directions. [Back
to verse 184]

186a.This verse speaks of the sufferings which were yet in
store for the Muslims. They had certainly been tried
respecting their property and their persons at Makkah. They
had been deprived of their property and turned out of their
homes; they had been severely persecuted and even put to
death for professing Islam. But this verse, revealed
undoubtedly after the battle of Uhud in the year 3 A.H.,
speaks of sufferings which were yet to come. It plainly
speaks of the future, rather of the distant future, because
Islam was now being firmly established in Arabia. The rise
of Islam was, however, to be followed by a setback of which
there are indications in the Quran and the sayings of
the Prophet. Thus we are told in a Hadith that Islam
started its career as gharib (as a stranger in a land
or as a sufferer at the hands of others) and that it
will once more (i.e. after rising to power) return to the
state in which it began (IM. 35:15). The abuses which have
been heaped on Islam in the nineteenth and the twentieth
centuries are indeed without a parallel, not only in the
history of Islam but in the whole history of religion. The
abusive language of the Christian, political, as well as
missionary, press and the vituperations of their imitators
in the Hindu press have outstepped all bounds. Thus both the
People of the Book and the idolaters have joined hands in
hurling the worst abuses at Islam and its Founder. But we
are here told that the Muslims shall, in addition to the
abuse of their religion, be made to suffer both respecting
their property and their persons. If they have so often been
turned out of their houses in the past century in Europe,
and Muslim States have been wiped out of existence in many
parts of the world, the twentieth century presents a yet
ghastlier scene of their woes in India. In a country in
which they have been living for over a thousand years, and
where their population was no less than a hundred millions,
they have been turned out of their homes mercilessly and the
cruellest tortures known to human history have been
inflicted on them in broad daylight and the civilised world
has not yet raised a finger against this genocide and the
perpetration of these brutalities. It is these calamities
which are spoken of in this verse. The concluding words of
the verse are the only hope of Islam in the present
tribulations  to be steadfast and keep their duty to
Islam. [Back
to verse 186]